In an urban landscape that is increasingly dominated by flex printed signs, Pooja seeks lettering that is crafted by hand across a range of materials and techniques. From hand painted ones to mosaic, neon to wood, and even unexpected materials like flowers and foliage, this vast collection is a lesson in the malleability of letterforms.
As of early 2025, India Street Lettering showcases signs from sixteen cities, and in eleven scripts. It is an invaluable resource for studying how the limits of experimentation and legibility can be stretched in local scripts.
Pooja uses this archive for educational workshops and lectures, type walks, as inspiration for new work. It helps broaden her understanding of Indian typographic cultures and design in local scripts. Most recently, she has published a series of zines to celebrate thematic design paradigms she has uncovered through organising and re-organising her documentation through different lenses.
Interested in a deeper dive? Listen to Pooja speak about the project at a public lecture at the Bangalore International Centre (2023), and read this essay on Purée Mag about design lessons that she has learned from street lettering (2025).
Explore the Resource
Recent Sightings
At the heart of this project is a vast, ever-growing archive of sightings that spotlight street lettering from around the country. Enjoy the diversity of letterforms on display, and with the help of filters, follow your own curiosity.
Curated Collections
Collections group signs together so you can study letterforms from specific scripts, see how various types of establishments present themselves, and consider the usage of materials and fabrication techniques.
Lettering Map
All the photographs in the archive are geo-tagged, and the map gives you an opportunity to find typographic patterns within cities and neighbourhoods, or even plan your own type walk.
Stories and Updates
Keep abreast of the latest publications, type walks and exhibitions, and immerse yourself in long form writing about design paradigms in street lettering, and typologies that emerge from it.
Support the Project
Buy a zine
Since 2023, Pooja has published zines to celebrate the best of India Street Lettering. Profits from their sale fund the upkeep of this website and ongoing documentation efforts. Get your copies online, or from local independent bookstores.
Attend an event
Champion the project by attending the next outreach programme in your city, or join an online event. Look out for what’s coming on Instagram, Mastodon and Bluesky, and through the newsletter, I Spy with my Typographic Eye.
Request a bespoke experience
Pooja would be happy to facilitate a bespoke type walk, presentation or workshop for your next design conference, team gathering, or student excursion/seminar. Get in touch with your requirements.
Meet the curator
Pooja Saxena is an award-winning typeface designer, lettering artist and typographer, with a focus on Indic scripts and local typographic and visual cultures in India.
She divides her time between her independent design and research practice, Matra Type, and being a team member at TypeTogether. At Matra Type, Pooja’s work focuses on design in and for Indic scripts, notably Devanagari. She has worked with Apple, Google Fonts, Zubaan Books and ThePrint among others. As type designer and project manager at TypeTogether, Pooja was part of the team that developed Adelle Sans Devanagari, and is lead designer for the upcoming Bree Devanagari and Playpen Sans Devanagari. She was co-editor and one of the lead researchers for Primarium, a groundbreaking educational effort to document models of handwriting taught in primary schools around the world.